Last week the Central Bank polled a number of Russian banks on
the national payment system (NPS), says the Vedomosti daily.

The result showed that most of Russian lenders voted against
developing one of the already existing platforms:The PRO 100 payment system used for Universal Electronic
Cards, Golden Crown and Union Card.

The regulator suggested creating a non-profit organization
together with the commercial banks and the payment systems, both
national and international to run it.

While the Russian authorities are trying to speed up the
development of Russia's national payment system, which would
shield it from further disruptions by Visa and MasterCard, market
players say most banks are now just looking to buy time.

"Probably, not all the banks really want the payment system
to be created from the scratch, but all precisely want to gain
some time and see where the wind blows. There is nothing
surprising that there is no vote: UECARD, or Universal Electronic
Card, is not architecturally ready to become the national payment
system (NPS)," the director of card business department of
one of the banks participating in the poll told Vedomosti.

According to Accenture analysis UECARD is only 40 percent ready.
To get NPS status the project needs an essential upgrade
according to Accenture. "It’s important to sustainably
increase the staff number, to develop and implement business
processes, to raise level of automation and provide many other
improvements," says the analysis.

The daily volume of card operations reaches about 20 million
actions per day, or 200 transactions per second. In high volume
periods the load can increase by up to 5 times, says Accenture.

It would also be necessary to create a backup data processing
center for continuity of service should a disaster happen.

“The UECARD wasn’t planned as the NPS project,” Dmitry
Ter-Stepanov, the UECARD vice president explained. The
development will require from half-a-year to year. According to
him it’s faster than creating the NPS from scratch.

The NPS will be discussed on Wednesday by the Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev.